Dear friends,

Every week, I’m sharing an essay that relates to what we are building and learning at Alan. Those essays are fed by the article I’m lucky enough to read and capitalise on.

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The present vs. the future 

People should never confuse the present with the future.

Let's not forget that our role is to build the future, and when we do so, the future arrives even faster.

I mention this, particularly in the context of using artificial urgency in healthcare.

We might be afraid and think that doctors don't want this, that members don't want this, but that would be completely neglecting the speed at which these technologies are advancing and how they are becoming ubiquitous.

If you have an AI co-pilot on your PC or Mac, if you have an assistant on your phone, if you use ChatGPT, you won't be shocked to see it in healthcare. This is happening much faster than we imagine.

Therefore, don't build exactly the solution that suits yesterday, but the solution that suits just tomorrow. Let's build tomorrow, let's be a bit ahead, let's not be afraid. Let's anticipate, and we will lead the way.

Some good articles I have read this week

Building companies & culture

👉The Indispensability of Risk (Oaktree)

• Good article about the unknown & risks, and how to manage it

• From chess, and applied to business:

  • “For a chess player, risk is as much intuited as it is calculated.”

  • Magnus Carlsen: “Not being willing to take risks is an extremely risky strategy.”

  • Because the future is inherently uncertain, we usually have to choose between (a) avoiding risk and having little or no return, (b) taking a modest risk and settling for a commensurately modest return, or (c) taking on a high degree of uncertainty in pursuit of substantial gain but accepting the possibility of substantial permanent loss. 

  • The willingness to live with some losses is an essential ingredient in investment success.

  • The more often we trust our judgment, the more confidence we gain in our decision-making capacity. 

• That’s what we do so often

👉An Interview with Michael Morton About E-Commerce Winners and Losers (Stratechery)

• Why I don’t like online Ads:

  •  In the Internet world, you have to pay Facebook and Google every time someone walks down the street and in the door and it doesn’t matter that you had to pay them for the person before that. 

• The exercise of writing an investment thesis forces you to make it so it’s digestible and also helps you build confidence that what you think is going to occur is likely to occur  ➡️why we push for asynchronous writing

👉Clean Escalate (Matt Mochary)

• I think we could be better at escalating

  • Dirty escalation vs. clean escalation

• Sometimes people share problems in 1on1s, and here is a good way to address them

AI

👉OpenAI’s model all but matches doctors in assessing eye problems (Financial Times)

• The model outperformed the juniors and achieved similar results to many of the specialists.

• It compares the AI model’s abilities with those of practicing doctors rather than with examination results.

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